Quote · The Shawn Ryan Show
#317 Johnnie Clark - Surviving One of the Deadliest Jobs During the Vietnam War
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'In the Midnight Hour': Hand-to-Hand Combat in the Mountains
At 1:26:45 · chapter starts 1:24:10
Seventeen straight days of combat contact have reduced the Marines to sleepwalking. Clark dozes on ambush duty, dreaming of cruising in his '57 Vette, when he begins hearing the Young Rascals' 'In the Midnight Hour' — which he assumes is part of the dream. It is not: an NVA soldier was carrying a boombox that had snagged on jungle undergrowth and switched on, tuned to Armed Forces Radio Network, which played the song every night at midnight [1] — Johnnie Clark "After 17 straight days of combat contact, Clark was dozing on ambush when he heard the Young Rascals playing 'In the Midnight Hour' — and t…" 1:24:10 . A teammate named Sugar Bear shot the soldier with an M14, but he was still alive when he tumbled down the hill onto Clark. In total darkness, with no time to reach the machine gun or his .45, Clark grabbed his K-Bar. The story has an unlikely coda: years later at a private party in St. Petersburg, Clark meets Felix Cavaliere of the Young Rascals and tells him the whole story. Cavaliere adopts it as his favorite story about the song.
After 17 straight days of combat contact, Clark was dozing on ambush when he heard the Young Rascals playing 'In the Midnight Hour' — and thought he was dreaming about home. Then an NVA soldier, already shot by a teammate, tumbled on top of him. The enemy was carrying a boombox tuned to Armed Forces Radio Network, which played that song every night at midnight. Clark reached his K-Bar. Decades later, he told the story to Felix Cavaliere of the Young Rascals at a party.
